He squatted beside her, watching her as she stared in fascination at the moss-like growth. There was something refreshingly childlike in her expression; he felt his stomach lurch when she looked up and smiled at him.
She took his hand, almost pulling him to his feet. They hurried through the trees, apprehended by wonder on all sides, from strange colourful flowers that floated through the air below diaphanous bubbles, to a variety of insect that cycled past them with an arrangement of wings like a paddle-steamer’s wheel. They saw tiny, darting silver creatures like lizards, which left shimmering images of themselves in their wake, evidently a survival mechanism, and animals like frogs, which inflated themselves to the size of footballs and retched noisome venom at their prey.
“Look, Joe,” she said, indicating a low-lying bush replete with small round fruit like melons. She picked one, holding it on her palm between them.
“Well, it certainly looks delicious.”
“Gina will soon tell us,” Hendry said.
“Perhaps I could try just a little?”
“Best not to. It might look great, but at the same time it might be poisonous.” He went on, “And even if it wasn’t harmful, it might not be any use as a foodstuff.”
At her frown, he said, “Not all proteins are like those on Earth. If the molecules are reversed in relation to our own...” He shrugged, “then the edible food of this world would pass through our system and we wouldn’t be able to metabolise it.”
“But if we could...”
He smiled. “Then I’ll name it Kaluchek fruit, after its discoverer.”
She smiled, looking around her at the shimmering golden forest. “I hope this place isn’t already inhabited. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to start a colony here?”
He pointed to a patch of sunlight, and standing in it the moss-covered outcropping of rock Kaluchek had seen earlier. They approached it, leaving the shade of the forest and stepping into warm sunlight.
She leaned against the rock, turned to him and smiled. She said nothing, just smiled, and then reached out a hand to him.
She was small, and seemed very young and beautiful, and sudden desire flipped in his belly like a live thing. He took her hand and she pulled herself to him, her lips so urgent that the contact was clumsy, bruising. He laughed, slowed her, took her face in both hands and kissed her lips, her cheeks and eyes.
Then she pulled away quickly and, before he could fear that he’d offended her in some way, she was twisting and struggling from the confines of her atmosphere suit and finally standing before him, at once small and vulnerable and yet elementally powerful in her nakedness.
Something caught in his throat, a sound like a moan. He dropped the blaster then pulled off his atmosphere suit, suddenly urgent, and when he fell into her embrace the touch of her flesh was electric.
She pulled him down on top of her onto the soft carpet of moss, then rolled so that she was straddling him, then took him and eased herself down around him. He slipped into her, amazed by her warmth and wetness, and she let out a loud cry of laughing joy and arched her back, riding him for minutes until he emptied himself and cried with the exquisite release.
After the animal act came the tenderness. She held him to her, stroking his face, his body. He felt dizzy, overcome with desire and at the same time a vast protective sense of caring for this woman.
He recalled Su, then, and how that had turned sour, and involuntarily he superimposed on this nascent relationship the experience of how that first one had failed—and then looked into Sissy’s wide dark eyes and banished such heresy from his thoughts.
“Jesus, Sissy...”
“I felt it when we met, Joe. I can’t explain it. The attraction... Christ, I wanted you from the very first time we met.”
He stroked her hair. “I never even considered it. You were... unattainable, too young... or rather I was too old—”
“As if that matters!”
“And I hadn’t had anyone for years...”
She whispered into his ear, “Me too.”
He felt a sudden kick of joy, then; she was making him happy for the first time in... in God knew how long. And he felt a sudden surge of optimism. If this world was safe, and not already inhabited, and they could transport the colonists up here, then what a paradise it would be.
She rolled away from him laughing, stood and scrambled up the outcropping of rock, and it struck Hendry that there was something gloriously outrageous in her naked athleticism on a new world so far from Earth.
He stood and followed her, feeling the wind on his exposed flesh, the sunlight striking his head and shoulders.
She was poised at the rock’s very summit, one knee bent, the other leg braced against the incline, and Hendry was struck speechless by the sight of her. He joined her, slipped a hand across the globe of her bottom, delighting in the spontaneous smile of complicity and affection she turned on him.
Side by side they surveyed the world.
They were high now, and from here the forest fell away down a long sloping escarpment, so that it seemed as if the whole hemisphere of the planet were laid out before them. Sissy laughed, and Hendry joined her in sheer joy at the sight.
The rolling forest top extended for as far as the eye could see, and a great river looped lazily through brilliant verdure on its unhurried journey towards the horizon.
She turned and pointed. In the distance he made out a sudden mountain erupting from the forest, a feature that seemed too regular to be natural. He scanned its height for any sign of features that might suggest habitation, but found none.
And, over everything, the golden sunlight prevailed.
She took his hand. “How are you, Mr Hendry?”
“Amazing,” he whispered, and then wondered whether he should be feeling guilt at experiencing such rapture so soon after losing his daughter.
His grief made the rapture all the greater, as he held Sissy to him and gazed out over her head.
She stiffened suddenly, and swore, and the swift transformation alarmed him. His heart kicked sickeningly. “Sis?”
“Oh, Christ, Joe. Look.”
His imagination conjured so many dire possibilities, in the second or so before he saw where she was pointing, that when he did see her cause for alarm he was almost relieved. It wasn’t some malign Serpent come to spoil their Eden, but then again perhaps it was.
The black ship swept in low over the forest like some kind of vast manta ray. It was perhaps a kilometre away, moving slowly over the treetops as if searching for prey.
She looked at him. “It’s the Church’s ship, right?”
He nodded, grabbed her hand. “Come on!”
They fled down the rock and slipped at the bottom on the velvet moss. They snatched the bundle of their atmosphere suits, Hendry remembering the blaster, and sprinted into the cover of the forest, pausing long enough to dress before resuming their flight.
Sissy stopped, grabbing him. “Joe!” she said. “Christ, Joe, which way now?”
He gazed about him at the serried tree trunks, which offered an identical vista in every direction. Then he laughed with relief and pointed. The golden-green moss had retained the smudged imprint of their passage, diminishing ellipses leading back to the clearing.
He took her hand and ran.
Minutes later he made out the teardrop shape of the ship through the trees, and the oddly reassuring sight of Carrelli and Olembe discussing something in its shadow. They both looked up as Hendry and Kaluchek emerged from the forest at a run.
“We have...” Kaluchek began, fighting exhaustion, “we have company. A ship. About a kay away, closer, and coming this way.”
Carrelli instinctively looked up, attempting to view the ship through the occasional rent in the canopy.
“You think they’ve managed to trace us here?” Olembe asked.
Carrelli shook her head. “I don’t know. Havor told me they could trace the ion trail, but I shut down the main drive a hundred kays back...
I’d say this was a lucky guess on the Church’s part.” She paused, then said, “I hope.”
Olembe reached out and snatched the blaster from Hendry’s grip. “You saw the damage this thing did. Just let the ship get near us and I’ll...”
Carrelli glanced at him. “If we see the ship, we let it pass, okay? It’ll be armoured. The blaster might penetrate it, but it might not. And we can’t take the risk of alerting them to our presence.”
Olembe nodded. “Okay, but if they have tracked us...”
From the ship, Ehrin emerged carrying a tool. Carrelli barked at him, and the effect of the words was instant. He dropped into a crouch and moaned, his teeth chattering together in a gesture that might have denoted fright or fear as he gazed up through the treetops.
Olembe said, “Ask it if there are more weapons aboard the ship, okay?”
Carrelli turned to Ehrin and relayed the question. Ehrin barked his reply and scurried back into the ship.
Carrelli shook her head. “As far as he knows, that’s the only weapon Havor carried. He said he’d search the ship for more.”
Kaluchek said, “What now?”
“Not much we can do, sweetheart.” Olembe looked at her atmosphere suit, then glanced at Hendry. “Hey, ain’t that cute? You two’ve swapped name tags.”
Hendry looked down, only then realising he was wearing Sissy’s suit, which had expanded to accommodate him.
Kaluchek stared at the African, refusing to be cowed, and said, “And fuck you, Olembe.”
Carrelli said, “Okay, okay... So, what do we do? We sit tight, I think is the phrase. The ship is as hidden as we can possibly make it.”
Hendry looked up. He could see gaps in the canopy, patches of blue light where golden spears of sunlight penetrated the submarine gloom of the clearing.
Then he heard the sound of the approaching ship, a low drone at first, climbing to an ever-present roar that drowned out Olembe’s imprecation and silenced the birdsong in the immediate area.
Seconds later Hendry made out a succession of flickers high overhead, the effect of the passing ship occluding the sun.
Instinctively he dropped into a crouch, Kaluchek and Carrelli beside him. Olembe remained standing, the rifle propped on his hip, his face turned up to track the ship’s progress high above them. He was perspiring, freely, great beads of sweat the only indication that he, like everyone else, was feeling the pressure.
The ship seemed to take an age to pass. The very noise of its engines was like a threat; Hendry imagined the ship as some predatory animal, playing with its minuscule prey. Sissy smiled at him, and it was all he could do not to pull her to him and kiss her.
The sound diminished gradually, the roar receding, and minutes later the ship disappeared from sight. The birdsong started up again, signalling the resumption of normality.
Hendry released a breath. Carrelli said, “I think that if they had seen us, then they would have fired. Havor said that the ship did not belong to them. There is the chance that their pilots haven’t fully mastered its monitoring capabilities.”
“Thank Christ for that,” Olembe said.
“I wonder how long they’ll keep on searching,” Hendry said, “and if they’ll land and send the militia after us.”
Carrelli looked at him. “The Church fears losing its power, according to Ehrin. They wish to eradicate all evidence that alien races exist. Their holy book claims that their kind are the only ones, God’s chosen people.”
“Where’ve I heard that before?” Olembe said.
“So...” Carrelli continued, “I don’t think they will give up the search that easily.”
“We might have to destroy the fucking thing if we want to stop them,” Olembe said. “Does your lemur friend know if our ship carries integral weapons?”
Carrelli shrugged. “He doesn’t know much about the ship at all. The technology is way beyond anything his people have even dreamed of.”
Olembe turned and spat against the carapace of the golden ship. “And pretty damned in advance of our science, too.”
Hendry indicated the open hatch in the flank of the ship. “How are you getting on with repairs?” He looked at Carrelli. “What’s the problem?”
She stared into the hatch and said, “The ship suffered damage on its initial landing on Ehrin’s world. They managed to patch something together—it was a simple engineering problem, nothing major. The ride up here blew the same part. The trouble is, we don’t have anything like the appropriate technology to repair it.”
“We’re looking at cannibalising other parts of the ship,” Olembe said, “but without the tools to do so...” He shook his head. “Imagine Neanderthal man, trying to repair a bicycle in the desert.”
Hendry glanced at Sissy. She had drifted away from the group—a tendency he had noticed when Olembe was holding forth. She was walking towards the forest, staring, her body language suggestive of her straining to hear something.
She stopped and turned quickly. “Shut it, okay? Listen!”
Olembe opened his mouth to protest, then fell silent as Carrelli laid a hand on his arm. Heart pounding, Hendry listened.
Kaluchek turned and ran back towards them, moving into his arms. He looked out above her head, towards the forest and the noise.
It was a grunt, a great snorting expiration, as if whatever was making the sound was labouring under a great weight.
Seconds later, as they watched, the ponderous headpiece of a vast creature emerged between the boles of the trees and peered in at them, the lids of its old eyes blinking myopically.
“What,” Olembe said, “in Christ’s name is that?”
Hendry’s immediate reaction was relief. He had feared some rapacious, taloned beast, not this overblown turtle-analogue, the expression on its face combining great wisdom with grandfatherly kindness.
It advanced its bulk little by little into the clearing and stopped before them, sighing dolorously. It did resemble a turtle, Hendry saw, but without a shell; it was wide and solid, its bulk vaguely elephantine, even its grey skin pachydermous.
Hendry was wondering if Carrelli spoke extraterrestrial turtle, when he made out the slight, silvery creatures riding upon its back and realised his mistake. The creatures were perhaps a metre tall, but perilously thin, and moved in bursts as swift as quicksilver.
They slipped from the beast and moved around the clearing, seating themselves on the ground in a semicircle. One of their number advanced to within a couple of metres of Carrelli and raised a clawed hand.
They were, he saw, like bipedal lizards, silver and scaled and fleet of movement. So much for this being a virgin world...
The leading creature spoke, its voice a whistle so high Hendry could hardly hear it.
Olembe laughed. “Reply to that, Gina,” he challenged.
Without glancing at him, Carrelli inclined her head to the alien and began to whistle. It was an impossible sound to come from a human throat, and only then did Hendry realise that it was her augmentation producing the noise.
The lizard creature replied, and then fell silent.
Carrelli turned to the rest of them, a baffled expression on her face. “He is Watcher Pharan, and he wishes us felicitations, and welcomes us to the world of Calique.” She paused, then went on, “His people have been awaiting us for millennia, he says, and he will be honoured now to lead us to the Sleeper.”
* * * *
2
Watcher Pharan was in a heightened state of consciousness when he slipped from the back of the sharl and approached the Fallen across the clearing. It was as if he had sloughed the infirmity of old age, as if his mind were again as crystal clear as that of the acolyte he had been ninety cycles ago. His every sensation seemed sharpened, his vision whetted by the blessed events in which he was participating. It would be the stuff of legend, and would surely enter the scriptures, never to be forgotten by the generations that studied on the mountain.
He reminded himself that there was ritual
to observe. It was all very well considering the future and his place in it, but that was immaterial: what mattered now was that he conduct himself with propriety; he was, after all, the ambassador of the Calique.
A dozen acolytes dismounted, from the three following sharls, moved around the clearing in the prescribed semicircle and seated themselves. They were the finest pupils of the mountain, with Sela seated immediately to his right.
He gazed across the clearing, hardly daring to believe that the day had come. The Fallen were a curious species. They were tall and bulky and slow moving, with oddly flattened faces and strangely textured skin, without scales; their flesh reminded Pharan of the raw meat that lay beneath his scales, which he had seen only once following an accident. How must they live from day to day, he wondered, with no outer protective covering?
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